


Trick

by rudbeckia



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Demonic Possession, Huxloween, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-08 07:52:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12250149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia
Summary: Huxloween day 7: Trick or TreatArmitage is in costume waiting for Ben so that they can both go to Dopheld’s Halloween party and scare the shit out of him.Unfortunately Dopheld’s demon costume is the real deal.





	Trick

Armitage sniggered as he put on his costume, careful not to smudge his make up even though Phasma had said it would be fine. He admired himself for a few seconds in the full-length mirror in Phasma’s room, then went to the bathroom to put in the contact lenses that made his irises a pale green that would glow in the dimness of the smelly shared hallway in their sandstone tenement, where the fifteen watt bulb was too poor even to attract moths. He returned to Phasma’s room and put the light out. 

Green eyes with tiny pinpoint pupils glared evilly back at him. The gaping maw painted black looked almost as if it split his pallid face in two, and the uneven, jagged teeth that Phasma had painstakingly shaded with pearl whites and yellows and phosphorescent highlights looked three dimensional. His hair had been the most troublesome, but over the past few days they’d tried a range of styles and products, but settled on slicking it back and stretching a skullcap over the top. Phasma had even drawn on anatomically correct cranial sutures and Hux forgave her all those times she’d described dissections and diseases over dinner and he’d sworn that he hated sharing a flat with a medical student who had a mountainous fear of failure.

His costume was simple if you didn’t count the laborious work on his face paint. A tight vest dress, ragged and wound around with fraying crepe bandages covered from his chest to his thighs. There were fake bloodstains and fake scars, and he wore tight leggings decorated to match. There hadn’t been much he could do with his hands, but he thought black painted nails with red around the cuticles didn’t look too out of place.

He put all the lights out except for the desk lamp in his room, and waited.

Meanwhile Ben walked across campus and up into the studenty area just to the north as if he was not currently wearing too much hair product, bloodstained evening wear, seeping crimson lipstick and a set of fake pointed teeth. The ensemble would have had a greater effect had he not been also carrying a brightly coloured tesco bag-for-life containing a change of clothes and two bottles of wine. He soon reached Armitage and Phasma’s building, and he grinned. 

This was going to be good.

Ben pushed open the outer door with a satisfying creak and walked softly past the ground floor flats, up the stone staircase to the first floor. He put his bag out of sight, knocked three times, posed with bared teeth and raised arms as if about to pounce. 

The door opened and two short screams echoed up and down the staircase.

Armitage laughed first. In the shadows of the entry to his flat it looked as if he was leaning his head back too far and opening his mouth so wide his skull might topple over backwards. Kylo grinned to show a mouth crammed with sharp, white teeth set in deep red gums.  
“Uh, ‘rick or ‘reat!” said Ben.  
“Ooh, definitely treat. Come in for a minute,” replied Armitage, stepping back. Ben retrieved his bag and followed, taking his fake teeth out and wrapping them in a handkerchief.  
“Thanks for letting me crash here after Doph’s party.” Ben took one of the bottles from his bag. “This one’s for you.”  
“Oh? Thanks!” Armitage took the bottle and gave Ben a quick kiss on his cheek. If either of them blushed under their face paint, neither of them noticed. Ben looked away.  
“Where should I put my stuff?” he asked, hoisting his bag up.  
“Through there,” Armitage pointed. “You’ll have to share my room. Phasma gets pissy if I have guests sleep in the living room.” Armitage gave Ben a frown that looked comical in costume and Ben smiled. “Hope that’s okay?”  
“It’s fine,” Ben replied, wishing Armitage would say _”Sod the party, let’s stay in and go to bed.”_  
Instead, Armitage removed from the freezer the box of frozen jello-shot eyeballs he had made in advance, offered Ben a smile and said, “Shall we go, then?”

On the short walk up the street and round the corner to Dopheld Mitaka’s flat, Ben bumped Armitage three times by accident and Armitage slipped his slim hand into Ben’s paw. Outside the building, Armitage pressed the entry buzzer and seconds later the door clicked. Ben pushed it open and they went into the dim passageway that was a mirror-image copy of the one they had just left. Ben paused at the bottom of the stairs. Music floated down and he smiled at Armitage.  
“Top floor?” asked Ben, releasing Armitage’s hand with some reluctance. Armitage smiled and nodded. Ben took his handkerchief from his pocket and unwrapped his fake teeth.  
“Wait!” Armitage put his hand on Ben’s arm. “Are you ever going to kiss me, or have I got you all wrong?”  
Ben gazed into fluorescent green eyes set in chalk-white orbits and smiled. He leaned forward and pressed his too-red lips against Armitage’s black-painted maw, wondering if it looked as if he was being devoured. Armitage giggled.  
“Thank fuck. Let’s stay long enough to be polite then go back to my place. I don’t even like the creep but Phasma made me promise to come.”  
“Mmm, I like that idea. Let’s go scare the crap out of Doph.”

 

From the second floor up to the third, every other step had a lantern carved from a pumpkin or a large, purple and cream turnip. Candles flickered inside, bathing the stairway in an eerie glow. Ben made soft _”woo-ooo”_ noises but Armitage only laughed and said the place reeked of roasting cabbage. Fake cobweb draped the open doorway and music played at just the right volume to mask conversations. A shriek came from inside, then silence and a laugh. Ben slipped his teeth in, banged on the door and stepped inside.

Dopheld screamed and giggled when he saw Ben and Armitage. His own costume was impressive — black contact lenses that obscured the whites of his eyes completely and a set of six small horns somehow stuck on his scalp and forehead. He had yellow crooked teeth and makeup that gave him a sallow, aged look. On his hands he had long, pointed, black painted nails. Phasma appeared behind him, dressed in her ward scrubs with more fake blood and an array of medical implements crowding out of her top pocket. She laughed.  
“Gimme.” She held out her hands for Armitage’s jello-shot eyeballs and Ben’s bottle of wine. “I’ll put these in the kitchen. Your turn to get a fright,” she said, pointing to the living room. “Everyone’s in there.”

Armitage walked in and stopped so suddenly that Ben walked into him. The other party-goers lay sprawled: face down on the carpet, leaning precariously backwards over the coffee-table, slumped in the armchair, half-sitting propped against the corner, bent over the arm of the sofa as if reaching down for something. Red stains coated every surface, making dark pools on the floor and spray marks that spattered high on the wallpaper.

“Fuck!” Armitage laughed. “Jeez, Doph, your landlord will have a fit! Ha! All right, guys, you can get up. You make very convincing corpses.”  
Ben grunted behind him and a weight hit his back. Armitage stumbled forwards and fell, the hand that shot out to protect him landing hard on the chest of Doph’s flatmate, Thanisson. Thanisson did not react and Armitage felt his hand slip on warm, slick fluid welling up from the student’s clothes. He twisted, and saw that the heavy weight pinning his legs was Ben, blood bubbling out between his vampire teeth, eyes flitting back and forward in silent panic then going still. Tight fear grasped at Armitage’s gut and twisted. He screamed for real this time. Above him, Phasma and Dopheld each raised a fist clutching a dripping carving knife. Two steel blades flashed down and Armitage’s scream abruptly stopped.

Phasma pulled both knives out and smiled at Dopheld. Dopheld smiled back.  
“That’s enough,” he said. “You have kept your end of the bargain and brought me seven souls. Eight if I take the one I’m wearing too. So I will give you your three wishes in return. What do you want? Be careful, though. There is no going back.”  
“Well,” Phasma sighed. “One, I wish to be found not guilty of these murders. Obviously. Two, I wish to pass all my exams and graduate in the top third of my year. Three. Hmm. Do I have to tell you now?”  
“If you would,” said Dopheld, laying a hand on Ben’s back and sighing in satisfaction as Ben shimmered out of existence. “I can’t possess this Dopheld person for much longer and I have a bit of clearing up to do here.”  
“Fine. I wish to know your name.”  
“You... you do realise the implication of such knowledge, don’t you?” The demon glared at Phasma’s cool stare. She smiled and nodded.  
“If my research is correct, I will be able to summon you whenever I want. You can’t refuse without breaking our agreement and you have already started to collect.” Phasma pointed at Armitage as he faded into thin air at the demon’s touch.  
“Very well, Phasma. Wait.” The demon touched each human, dissolving body and soul to nothing, then stood. Dopheld’s own eyes looked out in terror but only for a fraction of a second before he also shimmered and vanished, leaving Phasma alone with the stench of blood. 

A voice boomed in her ears and suddenly she was very afraid.  
_YOU MAY CALL ME SNOKE_  
“Snoke!” she said quietly, and felt a cold tendril slither up her spine to chill her brain.  
_YOU ARE FOOLISH TO TRUST A CREATURE YOU KNOW TO BE EVIL_  
Phasma grimaced and clutched her head, ice in her eye sockets and a sharp frost in her throat. Unable to speak, she mouthed a silent, _”No!”_ but the demon laughed.  
_I AM FEAR. I AM DARKNESS. I AM BITTER COLD THAT FREEZES AND KILLS. I AM NOT YOURS TO TAME AND CALL AT WILL._  
With a blink of deep black eyes, and long, pointed fingernails scratching at the irritation of six horns busting from her scalp and forehead, Phasma fell.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I really tried to make this one fluffy and light and cute but then it went all murdery.


End file.
